Jiri Prochazka says he wanted to fight at UFC 282 despite gruesome shoulder injury

Former UFC light heavyweight champion Jiri Prochazka recently reflected back on his canceled fight at UFC 282.

Prochazka was set to battle Glover Texeira in the headliner of UFC 282, defending his 205 lbs championship. Unfortunately, 'Denisa' had to withdraw from the bout due to a shoulder injury, relinquishing his title in the process.

Consequently, the light heavyweight championship was booked between Jan Blachowicz and Magomed Ankalaev at UFC 282, which ended in a split draw, thus leaving the division without a champion as of now.

In a recent appearance on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani, Jiri Prochazka revealed that he wanted to fight at UFC 282 despite his shoulder injury. The 30-year-old Czech fighter expressed confidence in his ability to defeat Glover Texeira, saying:

"Yes, that's true. Till now I'm still thinking about that I had to go to the fight. Because I believe...I can solve the fight. I can end it in the first second, in the first round, doesn't matter, to not be there longer than is necessary. But everybody knows the story about TJ Dillashaw. So, I wanna be just professional and I just wanna be humble to my team around me, to UFC, to my opponent."

You can check out Prochazka's views on vacating his title and pulling out of UFC 282 below:

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Jiri Prochazka's manager reveals how the fighter injured his shoulder

In a recent interview with Yahoo! Sports, Tim Simpson, manager of Denisa, discussed the event that caused the Czech to hurt his shoulder.

The manager reported that the fighter initially injured their shoulder during wrestling practice at the UFC Performance Institute. However, the situation was made worse when someone attempted to reset it:

"The shoulder got wrecked in a standard wrestling accident type of thing. You know how shoulders are, right? It pops out and a lot of the time, you pop it right back in. There was a wait and it popped out. And you never really know with a shoulder until you dig into it."

In a recent appearance on a podcast show, Dana White too, confirmed that Prochazka's injury was severed after his teammates' attempts to fix it:

"What happened was it [Prochazka's shoulder] popped out and he had some guys there at the gym [tried to put it back in], and they ripped the s**t out of it and destroyed his shoulder."

Check out Dana White detail Jiri Prochazka's shoulder injury below (1:44 mark):